Beto O'Rourke hires former top Obama aide as campaign manager

Beto O'Rourke's hiring of Jennifer O'Malley Dillon signals that for his White House bid, he is willing to look beyond the inner circle he kept during his U.S. Senate campaign.
Ivan Pierre Aguirre for The Texas Tribune

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"We're excited that Jen O'Malley Dillon has joined our team," O'Rourke said in a statement Monday. "Her leadership, experience and creativity will be a great addition to a campaign that is already doing so much to bring people together to overcome the greatest set of challenges this country has ever faced."

O’Malley Dillon was deputy campaign manager for former President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election bid. Before that, she served as executive director of the Democratic National Committee.

"I’m so excited to join the [O'Rourke] team and get to work building a campaign that will lift people up and unite them to meet our challenges, and that will show up everywhere and listen to & value every voice," O'Malley Dillon wrote in a tweet, sharing a New York Times story that first reported her hiring.

Since announcing his White House run earlier this month, O’Rourke has faced questions about his campaign leadership, which he has said will be made up of people from his 2018 U.S. Senate bid as well as some fresh faces. He told reporters a few days after he entered the 2020 race that he was “working on it” with regard to a campaign manager.

The hiring of O'Malley Dillon signals that for his White House bid, O'Rourke is willing to look beyond the inner circle he kept during his U.S. Senate campaign against Republican Ted Cruz. For that race, his campaign manager was a political novice and family friend, Jody Casey.

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